Do we really have an actual "free market" anymore?

I was at a local political meeting recently and met a guy who was planning to run for KY state senate in the Lexington area. We got into a debate about vaccine mandates and what governors and legislatures should do about it.

He considered himself a strict Constitutional libertarian, and for the most part I think we agreed on almost everything, at least in principle. When discussing the vaccine mandates, he felt it wasn't the governments job to interfere with private business activity.

Which of course I agree with that in theory... however my point to him was that these companies are not really private businesses anymore, and these traditional libertarian principles do not apply. At minimum you have to remove every bit of state provided incentives and tax breaks if they are going to harass tax payers who work for them.

If we had a true free market, how is it that every single corporation seems to be in unison on everything? It makes no sense in a real free market. Surely you think you would have one airliner bucking the trend to not require masks for passengers and not require vaccine mandates for employees, that would only make sense. You would see the same with every corporation hopping on to BLM, Pride, and whatever other social justice cause. There would be other alternatives to appeal to the other half of the country. Why would Ford feel the need to promote a rainbow Ford Raptor? It makes no sense, the majority of Ford Truck buyers are straight conservative men.

We as consumers don't have the option to dictate the free market anymore. Post 2008 and TARP, all major companies and corporations have become property of the federal government. Which in essence, has made them more powerful than the federal government, they aren't restricted by the Constitution.